Lent

Ash Wednesday; Great Lent in the Orthodox churches

The forty days before Easter, not counting Sundays, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday in the West; the Orthodox churches begin Great Lent on Clean Monday

Writing to Victor of Rome about the date of Easter, he says the churches differed over the fast before it: some fasted one day, others two, others more, and some counted the day as forty hours. He shows no fast of forty days, and says the variety long predated him. The letter is preserved in Eusebius. This is the root from which Lent grew, not Lent itself: a fast of a day or a few, of no fixed length.

some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more; some, moreover, count their day as consisting of forty hours day and night.

Canon 5 is the first known use of the Greek word tessarakoste, “the fortieth”. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the canon speaks only of the proper time for holding synods, and the word may refer to a feast, not to a period of fasting.

His Festal Letters give the first clear forty-day fast. In 331 he tells his people to fast forty days before the stricter fast of Holy Week. In 339, after traveling to Rome and over much of Europe, he urges the same fast as one kept everywhere, so that Egypt will not be the one place that does not fast. This is the first sure record of Lent, about three centuries after the church began.

In his time Rome still kept six weeks of six fast days each, thirty-six days in all, which Gregory calls a tenth of the year, a spiritual tithe. Writing to Augustine of Canterbury, he lays down the rule to abstain from meat and from all that comes from flesh, as milk, cheese and eggs. Only after him were four days added so that the fast would total forty, which is how Lent came to begin on what is now Ash Wednesday (H5).

The English homilist treats the ashes of Ash Wednesday as a rite for everyone, not only penitents, and urges the people to come to church for them. The name dies cinerum, “day of ashes”, is found in the earliest copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary of the 8th century.

Records the ashes of Ash Wednesday as the general practice for clergy and laity alike. The rite had begun with public penitents and spread to all the faithful.

The English reformers stop the use of ashes. In a sermon of January 18, 1548, Latimer attacks such ceremonies for taking from the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, as the Ad Fontes journal quotes him. In 1549 Cranmer calls holy ashes, with holy bread, water and palms, ordinances of the bishops of Rome, not of Christ. The Book of Common Prayer had no ashes until the American prayer book of 1979.

every one hath robbed some part of Christ's passion and cross, and hath mingled Christ's death, and hath been made to be propitiatory and satisfactory, and to put away sin.

Its Directory for the Publick Worship of God says festival days, commonly called holy days, have no warrant in the word of God and are not to be continued. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and other strict bodies keep only the Lord’s Day on this ground.

A Catholic himself, he saw his Friday customers going to a rival for fish during Lent, and made a fish sandwich. On Good Friday in 1962 he sold 350, and in 1963 McDonald’s put the Filet-O-Fish on its menu everywhere. Lenten fish promotions are now routine in fast-food chains.

Cuts the Catholic fast down. Fasting and abstinence bind on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and abstinence from meat on the other Fridays. It declares that by divine law all the faithful are required to do penance, and that the days of penance bind gravely. The document teaches that the whole church is called to share in Christ’s expiation, that the little acts of penance imposed in the sacrament join the person to the infinite expiation of Christ, and it asks pastors to promote penance in Lent above all.

particularly during the Lenten season, extraordinary practices of penitence aimed at expiation and impetration

Abstinence from meat or another food is to be observed on all Fridays, and abstinence and fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The law of abstinence binds from the fourteenth year, and the law of fasting from the age of majority until the sixtieth year begins. Canon 1253 lets the conference of bishops fix the observance more exactly, and put other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in place of abstinence and fast, in whole or in part.

Its Book of Worship first gives an official Ash Wednesday service with ashes. Before then Methodists had no official service until 1965, and an “ashless” service from 1965. The use of ashes remains optional in every rite for the day.

survey of February 1-20, 2008

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate surveys 1,007 self-identified Catholic adults. Sixty percent say they do not eat meat on Fridays during Lent, and 45 percent say they typically receive ashes on Ash Wednesday. Among those who attend Mass weekly, 89 percent abstain from meat on Fridays. The survey did not ask about fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Writing about Advent, he adds that he does not practice Lent either, because it is man-made. He says that if someone else’s practice opens a chance to speak of God, he will answer with God’s truth. It is one writer’s view, not a church statement.

I do not practice it because it is man-made

A Pew survey of Central and Eastern Europe finds that a median of fewer than one-third of Orthodox Christians in the region report praying daily and fasting during holy times such as Lent. Catholics in the region are twice as likely as Orthodox Christians to fast during holy times (54% to 27%). These are regional medians across countries, not a count of all Orthodox Christians and not a count of the United States.

a median of fewer than one-third of Orthodox Christians in the region report praying daily and fasting during holy times such as Lent

A Pew survey of 12,693 U.S. adults, February 13-25, 2024, finds that four in ten U.S. Catholics fast. Pew did not ask when they fast, so the figure is not a count of Lenten fasting; Pew says only that many Catholics around the world fast during Lent. In 2015 Pew found that 47% of Catholics said they gave up something or did something extra for Lent in the previous year.

Four-in-ten U.S. Catholics fast, according to the February survey.

Before Nicaea, Christians fasted for a day or a few days before Easter (H1). In the 4th century a season of forty days appears quickly and almost everywhere (H3), modeled by its supporters on Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). Historians give three main accounts of how it arose, below, and Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson now argue for several origins that were joined after Nicaea. Counting also differed: Rome kept thirty-six fast days (H4), and four were added later so that the fast would total forty. Ashes began with public penitents and spread to everyone (H5, H6).

Two claims lack a source. Some church fathers held that the apostles set up Lent, but no first- or second-century text says so. Some writers connect Lent to weeping for Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14); no early Christian source supports this, and mainstream scholars do not accept it.

The paschal fast grew backward

Preparation for baptism and for public penitents

The Alexandrian thesis

Roman Catholics

The Eastern Orthodox churches

Anglicans and Lutherans

The United Methodist Church

A growing number of evangelical churches

Strict confessional Presbyterians

Many Baptist and nondenominational churches

The Churches of Christ

The Churches of God in the Armstrong tradition

Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends)

Ash Wednesday

Ashes, made from the palms of the year before, are marked on the forehead in a cross, with the words “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return”, or “Repent, and believe the gospel”.

Fasting and abstinence

Over the centuries the rule softened: one meal a day in the evening, then at three, then at noon, with dispensations. The present Catholic rule is one full meal and two smaller ones on fast days, and abstinence from meat on Fridays (H11). The Orthodox rule is stricter.

A quieter liturgy

The Alleluia and the Gloria are left out until the Easter Vigil, purple is worn, and the decoration is simpler. Crosses and images may be veiled from the fifth Sunday of Lent.

The Eastern services of Lent

A rite of mutual forgiveness at the start, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, and the Great Canon of repentance.

Giving something up

A personal sacrifice, with prayer and almsgiving. Bishops may allow works of charity in place of fasting. Many who do not keep the church’s season take up such a discipline on their own.

Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras

The pre-Lent feast of eating, masks and parades, brought to the Americas by colonists in the 16th and 17th centuries. “Shrove” comes from being “shriven”, confessing before Lent.

Friday fish fries

Abstinence from meat on Lenten Fridays leads to parish fish fries.

Fast-food Lenten fish

The Filet-O-Fish began in Lent in 1962 (H9). Restaurant chains now run Lenten fish promotions.

The Lord appointed one remembrance, and it is weekly

The New Testament gives the church the Lord’s Day and the Supper, and no yearly season of fasting (S1, S2).

The Lord gave the church the Supper, and Paul says what it does: “ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come” (S1). The church kept it on the first day of the week (S2). Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly season to its worship.

The New Testament shows no church keeping forty days before the resurrection, and the record agrees. The first sure sign of a fast before Easter is a few days of no fixed length (H1), and the forty days first appear in the 4th century (H3). Lent is a development, not a thing handed down.

Fasting is in the New Testament, and it is free

Jesus assumes His followers will fast, and the church at Antioch fasted; no text fixes a season or a rule (S3, S4).

When John’s disciples asked why Jesus’ disciples did not fast, He said the days would come when the bridegroom was taken away, “and then will they fast” (S3). The church at Antioch “ministered to the Lord, and fasted”, and fasted and prayed before it sent Barnabas and Saul away (S4). So fasting is a part of Christian life, and nothing here is against it.

But in every case the fast is a free act, and the New Testament sets no season, no number of days and no list of foods. Jesus asks that it be done in secret (S9). The fast at Antioch was that congregation’s, on an occasion and for a purpose. It differs from a season a church fixes for everyone each year.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to; Colossians 2 says no one may judge over it (S5, S6).

Paul writes of believers who differed over foods and days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S5). He adds that the one who eats not, “unto the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks”. The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian season. It does give the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between the believer and the Lord. Colossians 2:16-17 says no one may judge a believer “in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day” (S6).

Some read these texts as concerning Jewish days only, so that they neither forbid nor permit a Christian season. Others read them as a rule that no day may be required. On either reading, no one may bind a season on a brother. A Christian may keep a private Lent. They may not make it binding on others.

A fast the church imposes binds the conscience

Paul calls rules of “Handle not, nor taste, nor touch” human precepts with a show of wisdom in will-worship (S7).

Paul asks the Colossians why, having died with Christ, they submit to ordinances such as “Handle not, nor taste, nor touch”, “after the precepts and doctrines of men” (S7). Such rules look wise, he says, in “will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body”, but they are of no value against the flesh. The Colossian teaching was a mixture, and scholars differ on its sources. The point holds in any case: a rule of abstaining, laid on a church as a duty, is a human precept, however devout.

This is the line the page draws. A believer’s own fast, kept for the Lord in secret, is not a fault (A2). A fixed season and a rule of foods, imposed by the church on its people, is.

A rule the church can loosen is the church’s rule

Jesus faults worship that teaches the precepts of men as doctrine (S8); a rule the church can lighten at will is its own, not God’s.

Jesus quotes Isaiah against a people who honor God “with their lips” while “Teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men” (S8). The Catholic Church binds the Lenten fast and Friday abstinence, and says its days of penance bind gravely (H10). Yet it has loosened the rule again and again: the one daily meal moved from evening to noon, with dispensations; Paul VI cut the fast down in 1966 (H10); and canon 1253 lets each conference of bishops put other penance in its place (H11). The Catholic answer is that fasting rules are church law, which the church may change as it may not change doctrine, and that Christ gave it the power to bind and to loose (Matthew 16:19). That answer grants the point: a rule the church can lighten as it judges best is the church’s own, and a human rule cannot bind the conscience as a command of God (S7).

The surveys must be read with care. In 2008, 60 percent of U.S. Catholics said they skip meat on Lenten Fridays, a clear majority, and 45 percent received ashes (H13). In 2024 four in ten said they fast, though Pew did not ask when (H16). The Orthodox Church in America calls its stricter rules “an ideal to be striven for”, and in Central and Eastern Europe Pew found a median of only 27 percent of Orthodox fasting in holy times (H15). So the fault is not that most Catholics break the Friday rule; most keep it. It is that a rule its own church treats as adjustable, or as an ideal, is bound on the conscience as a duty. This weighs the claim to bind, not those who fast, many of them quietly, as Jesus asks (S9).

Jesus tells His disciples to fast in secret and not to show it. A visible ash mark on the forehead does the opposite.

The command is plain: fast so as not to be seen by men. It weighs against any fasting done for show. Those who wear ashes say the mark is a sign of repentance and not a display, and traditions differ on whether it conflicts with the passage. The text speaks first to the motive of the one who fasts. But its instruction runs the other way from a mark: “anoint thy head, and wash thy face”, so that the fast is not seen. So it does not by itself forbid ashes, but it is a good reason for the church not to make a public sign of a private act. The page’s verdict rests on A1 and A4, not on this text alone.

Paul says some will fall away, “commanding to abstain from meats”, which God created to be received with thanksgiving. Lent’s abstinence from meat is such a command.

Paul is speaking of teachers who forbid marriage and command abstaining from foods, and his reason is that God made these foods to be received with thanksgiving. A believer who gives up meat for a season, and gives thanks for food the rest of the year, is not the teacher he describes, and the passage does not forbid a voluntary fast. It does weigh against a church that commands abstinence as a duty or teaches that the food is the problem. Colossians 2:20-23 (S7) speaks to the same kind of rule.

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years”, and fears his labor was in vain. Lent is a sacred season.

The Galatians were Gentiles who had worshiped no gods (verse 8) and were now taking up the law’s calendar as a way to stand right with God (verse 21 and 5:4). Scholars differ whether their days were pagan or Jewish. The text strikes at days made necessary for standing with God, which fits a season imposed on the church as a duty. It does not name Lent, and it does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a season, which Romans 14 allows (S5). The case against Lent in the church’s worship rests on the pattern (A1), not on this passage alone.

Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights. The church’s forty days follow His.

The forty days were His, in the wilderness, at the start of His work and before His temptation, not on the way to the cross. The Gospel does not tell His disciples to copy the fast, and no apostle sets a forty-day season. Moses and Elijah also kept forty days (Exodus 34:28; 1 Kings 19:8), and the church drew its number from all three; none of the three passages tells anyone to repeat the fast. The number in the church’s Lent follows His, but the text does not make the following a command (A2).

The Ash Wednesday reading calls Israel to turn to God “with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning”. The church answers the same call each Lent.

The call is to repentance, and the church should make it. But the heart of the call is to “rend your heart, and not your garments”, which asks for the inward turning and not an outward sign. Joel spoke to Judah in a particular crisis, and the New Testament never sets a yearly season of fasting on that ground. Repentance may be preached on any Lord’s Day (A1).

Daniel sought the Lord with fasting, sackcloth and ashes. The Bible gives a precedent for ashes as a sign of repentance.

Daniel did this on his own, in a time of need, and not on a fixed day for the whole community. Ashes in the Old Testament are a sign of grief and repentance, and no one disputes that. The question is whether the church may fix a yearly day for them and require them. The text records a man’s act of devotion. It does not appoint a day for the church (A2).

Study

• Jesus assumes that His disciples will fast (Matthew 9:15; Matthew 6:16), and the church at Antioch fasted (Acts 13:2-3). What is the difference between that and a fast the church fixes for everyone?
• The first sure record of a fast before Easter is a few days of no fixed length (H1), and the forty days come only in the 4th century (H3). Does it matter how late a practice began, if Scripture does not give it?
• Colossians 2:20-23 speaks of rules that look wise but bind the flesh. Where does a voluntary discipline end and a binding rule begin?
• Matthew 6:16-18 asks that fasting be done in secret. How might a church call its people to fast without making it a public show?
• Many Christians who do not keep Lent give up something for the Lord on their own. What do Romans 14:5-6 and Colossians 2:16 say to them, and to those who judge them?

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